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Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#401

Post by MivLives »

peter303 wrote: post #223

Some of the VR movies are getting quite good. First the newer generation headsets- 2K, 90+ fps, cableless- no longer induce nausea. Second, movie makers are becoming versant with the strengths and limits of this media. One I saw in December called Container, I felt I was in the room with various scenes of realistic 3D people.

This looks cool. The issue with this sort of movie is distribution. For example Container looks cool. I'd love to have seen it. But I missed all the festivals it was at. Who is going to distribute this to me? I guess Steam but that doesn't seem right. I know they've sold movies in the past but I'm not sure how many would ever pay. What's the netflix of vr movies?

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#402

Post by kragen »

kirubakaran wrote: post #340
ubermonkey wrote: post #290

Well, this is far afield from the normal discussions here, but: 8 years ago, I had a pretty bad cycling crash and broke my hip -- which, if you're not aware, means I broke the "femoral neck", or the narrow bit of bone between the long part of the femur and the "ball" that goes into your pelvis. Post-repair, my x-ray looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/gRqg50J.png Anyway, with that much hardware in a repair, you're p…

Congratulations! > I live in a top-tier city for this kind of medical attention What city is that, if you don't mind?

maybe beijing, shanghai, zurich, minneapolis, or moscow

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#403

Post by adenozine »

kragen wrote: post #381
adenozine wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew the first half of that sentence, but I'm shocked that it had SIMD way back then. I looked on wikipedia but didn't find anything about that tidbit, do you happen to know where you learned that?

reading ivan sutherland's dissertation on sketchpad, the first gui, which ran on the tx-0; it's also mentioned in a recent ieee (spectrum?) article promoting the risc-v vector extension, but unfortunately i didn't save the link

I think I found it?

Either way, I appreciate the tidbit. Good reading inspiration.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#404

Post by jiggawatts »

A hobbyist made a 2x2 angled LEGO brick with a computer and an OLED display embedded into it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wBrOV2FJM8

This is a mind blowing level of miniaturization, especially considering that this was assembled by someone at home with commercially available off-the-shelf parts! The fact that he used a cheap, readily available 3D printer to manufacture the jigs and mould parts is the icing on the cake.

When I grew up, computer monitors were heavy and had big vacuum tubes in them made out of thick glass. At the scale of a LEGO brick, it was already amazing having a single LED light instead of an incandescent light bulb!

A working computer!? With a display? Madness!

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#405

Post by markus_zhang »

roughly wrote: post #231
raptor556 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to restart my career, this is likely the field I'd pursue. I read The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee last year and just became enraptured in the possibilities. I'm wondering if there's anything I can contribute to that field as someone with general programming capabilities.

> I'm wondering if there's anything I can contribute to that field as someone with general programming capabilities. Oh there Absolutely is! In general, there are four really high impact areas for computer folks - automation of lab equipment allows for scaling the number of experiments and the data that can be gathered by orders of magnitude; data science and engineering to sort, catalog, and investigate that data; b…

If I want to do data engineering for such labs, how should I aporoach or even find such opportunities? I heard they hire graduate students for that in general.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#406

Post by flemhans »

skrbjc wrote: post #328
ubermonkey wrote: post #290

Well, this is far afield from the normal discussions here, but: 8 years ago, I had a pretty bad cycling crash and broke my hip -- which, if you're not aware, means I broke the "femoral neck", or the narrow bit of bone between the long part of the femur and the "ball" that goes into your pelvis. Post-repair, my x-ray looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/gRqg50J.png Anyway, with that much hardware in a repair, you're p…

My brother had a shoulder surgery that he put off for many years. The doctor actually told him that he did the right thing because the type of surgery he needed has some such a long way in the last 10 years. It's great that we're still making so much progress in these areas.

How far behind is e.g. Europe compared to the U.S.? Do these innovations generally spread, or are they hindered by local regulations in each country?

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#407

Post by kragen »

adenozine wrote: post #403
kragen wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reading ivan sutherland's dissertation on sketchpad, the first gui, which ran on the tx-0; it's also mentioned in a recent ieee (spectrum?) article promoting the risc-v vector extension, but unfortunately i didn't save the link

I think I found it? Either way, I appreciate the tidbit. Good reading inspiration.

post post

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#408

Post by folmar »

pkalinowski wrote: post #175

Unreal Keanu: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FeHzQizPDNg people in the comments have no idea it's a deepfake. Without knowing beforehand, I wouldn't recognize it too.

Really, this is one of the most unconvincing deepfakes I've seen.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#409

Post by MiddleEndian »

lqet wrote: post #42

ChatGPT. This is the only technology that truly freaked me out in my lifetime (I am 35). It competently explained to me the difference between Dijkstra's algorithm and A* in a psalm-like poem [0]. It was able to find misspelled words in a long text I just made up, list them in alphabetical order, and explain to me why I misspelled them. It correctly simulated a ChatGPT instance which was accessible via a HTTP API, an…

I've spent far too much time antagonizing ChatGPT, it's good shit.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#410

Post by O__________O »

antipotoad wrote: post #338

The yaybahar. It really sounds like there are electronics involved, but no: > Yaybahar is an electric-free, totally acoustic instrument designed by Gorkem Sen. The vibrations from the strings are transmitted via the coiled springs to the frame drums. These vibrations are turned into sound by the membranes which echo back and forth on the coiled springs. This results in an unique listening experience with an hypnotic…

Appears to be a variant of a spring drum:

https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Spring+drum

Enable to find an example, but seen another variant where the spring is suspended in the center of a hollow tube with caps on the ends and hole on the side for sound to escape.

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